Neverwhere
Neverwhere — A stand-alone novel by Neil Gaiman Publishing Information * Publishers: William Morrow Paperbacks, BBC Books, Headline Review, HarperCollins, * Author Page: Neil Gaiman from HarperCollins Publishers * Book Page: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman Data: * Edition: Paperback, First Paperback Edition, 287 pages, Published September 16th 1996 by BBC Books — ISBN-0563387467 * Edition: Paperback, 370 pages, Pub: Sept 2-2003 by William Morrow Paperbacks (first published 1996) — ISBN-0060557818 * Edition: Paperback, 370 pages, Pub: Sept 2-2003 by William Morrow Paperbacks * Edition: Paperback, Author's Preferred Text, 384 pages, Pub: 2005 by Headline Review — ISBN-0755322800 * eBook: 400 pages, Pub: Mar 17-2009 by HarperCollins e-books (first published 1996)—ISBN-0061793051 Genres and Sub-Genres Urban Fantasy / SciFi * Neverwhere is a stand-alone Urban Fantasy. Book Description or Overview Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew. ~ ‎Shelfari Themes * Homelessness: Describe this theme. * Ignorance: Richard was ignorant to the people around him, just floating through his life but not truly enjoying any of it. He was exposed to a whole new world when he "fell through the neck" which caused him to open his eyes to the world around him * Loss of Innocence: Richard begins his journey as someone who is innocent and pure. As he ventures through London-Below he is exposed to the horrors that world contains and once his views on the Angel Islington are shattered by the Angel's true nature, he loses all innocence of his previous thoughts. ~ Source: ‎Shelfari Other Series by Author (onsight) American Gods series World Building Setting London Below (aka London Underground) * A fictional place under the city: London, almost now people know it exists. Places: * Floating Market: The floating market is a place where all of London Below meet. It is always moving * London Above: London, England: Present day * British Museum Tube Station: A disused station on the London Underground: * H. M. S. Belfast: A moored battleship in the Thames * Islington: * Hammersmith: * Ruislip: * Harrods: * Down Street: * London Wall: The Supernatural Elements Monsters, saints, angels, knights in armour, Glossary: * Groups and Organizations: * Velvets: A cold race of people living in London Below who act as guides but appear to be tricksters who corner the unsuspecting and suck the life from them. Unclear if this is true of all members of the race, or just what we see. * Rat Speaker Group: World Richard Mayhi is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but demanding fiancée. Then one night he stumbles across a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her—and the life he knows vanishes like smoke. Several hours later, the girl is gone too. And by the following morning Richard Mayhew has been erased from his world. His bank cards no longer work, taxi drivers won't stop for him, his landlord rents his apartment out to strangers. He has become invisible, and inexplicably consigned to a London of shadows and darkness—to a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere. For this is the home of Door, the mysterious girl whom Richard rescued in the London Above. A personage of great power and nobility in this murky, candlelit realm, she is on a mission to discover the cause of her family's slaughter, and in doing so preserve this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it. And with nowhere else to turn, Richard Mayhew must now join the Lady Door's entourage in their determined—and possibly fatal—quest. For the dread journey ever-downward—through bizarre anachronisms and dangerous incongruities, and into dusty corners of stalled time—is Richard's final hope, his last road back to a "real" world that is growing disturbingly less real by the minute. ~ Shelfari Protagonist Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. Book Cover Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks. Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere. ~ Goodreads | Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman Awards * Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Nominee for Adult Literature (1998), * Prix Julia Verlanger (1999)